Living in a world influence is stressful to say the least. Everyone wants you to see their point of view, buy their product, use their service, etc., and we listen. Every decision you make, sadly, is not an act of freewill, but a byproduct of the limited knowledge you’ve received from your five senses.
The topics of “brainwashing” and “mind control” have always been fascinating ideas to me. Being able to make a group of people who are mindless servants is a pretty cool concept, I don’t care what you say. If I had a group of mindless servants to do my bidding, I’d certainly be making a lot more money, and I would be able to get them to push my agenda without their knowledge.
You barely know what can influence you
Wait, isn’t this what currently happens? Every time you make a purchase at a clothing store, you are furthering a larger company’s agenda. You are putting more money into their pockets, to make them live a comfortable lifestyle. This isn’t a bad thing, because this is what happens in a capitalist socio-economic society. We are raised to believe that those with high quality lifestyles deserve it, as a result of their hard work and hard earned money. I believe this has a lot of merit, except when our world allows “money to make money”, a staple of free enterprise and capitalism, you are now substituting hard work with easy work. You sit back and relax as your money is making more money. This could be because some people are more intelligent than others, and it’s our society’s system for rewarding intelligence; however, it’s more of a matter of understanding the mechanics of the system and manipulating it in your favor. Understanding the mechanics of the system will land you more money, than any other job or position in the entire world. Once you understand the mechanics, making money is easier than breathing. If it’s that easy, is it a result of hard work? Getting the money to start making money is arguably hard work, but that’s another topic entirely.
So now, you have people who have nothing better to do but make more money. What better way to do that than continue to promote their product that originally filled their pockets? Science gets involved, and social psychology is a leader in this field. They figure out what makes people “tick”. We’re emotional creatures, and so businesses target our emotions in order to sell their product or service. There are usually many choices available when you want something from the store, and yet you decide to get the more expensive brand-name cereal, than the off-brand that is cheaper/healthier/etc. This is because the expensive brand more than likely spent more money in advertisements, telling you about their absolutely amazing delicious cereal that you’ve never really seen associated with anything except “silly rabbits”, or leprechauns running through the forest away from kids who want this cereal. You are constantly bombarded with the message that this is a delicious cereal for kids! No wonder you buy the cereal that is clearly more expensive and loaded with junk than the cheaper, healthier, larger box of cereal right next to it. You may justify yourself and say that you just like the taste better, which may be well and true, but does that mean the other stuff I mentioned had absolutely no affect on your decision to purchase the cereal?
Even something subtle like this
The above is just one example of how advertising actually influences us to doing something against all logic. This doesn’t mean big businesses are the only people out to influence you. The public school system is a brainwashing system modeled after the prison system. Every public school I have seen, had fences that would surround the students. They take attendance after every break from class, and keep accountability of every child, and are constantly being monitored, as if the activities that the kids are doing would some how end up more dangerous if the presence of a campus supervisor wasn’t within 100 meters of the activity. Get real. This is a system that we put our children through, that encourages conformity and absolute discipline, and discourages them from thinking and asking questions.
I speak from personal experience. When I say discourages from thinking and asking questions, that doesn’t mean that teachers come at you like a hawk and peck your eyes out for doing those things. Teachers are humans too, and the joy of a teacher is to be able to influence the next generation of humans, and build relationships with students so that they may even see you as a mentor. The problem is that children aren’t given an outlet for thinking and asking questions while in school, so it makes it very difficult to promote that thought processes. Schools teach what to think, more than how to think. They give you information out of a textbook that they deem to be credible, and say learn this information. Then they test you on the information, nearly word for word. That seems kind of pointless, because that really just tests memory, not their ability to apply the information they just learned. This makes the youth meet a level of standard to be a consumer. How many thirteen year olds do you know that could live by themselves and take care of themselves in the woods? I don’t know anyone I was raised with that could do it. Several hundred years ago, a thirteen year old was completely self-sufficient, and could work as a man. Today, we are not taught to be self sufficient, because to be would mean you are no longer classified as a consumer, and where is the money in that?
Changes the way you think
There are so many forms of influence and brain washing that goes on in our lives everyday, that I am personally beginning to believe that very few people ever act on their own accord now. If you find yourself guilty of being sculpted (I totally admit to it) by your environment your whole life, and realize that you aren’t where you want to be, that’s good. The first step is raising awareness to this travesty of life. Once you are aware of what’s going on, you can take action and change yourself. Know that your brain is constantly absorbing information, and translating it into something useful. If your brain doesn’t find it useful, it forgets or logs it away so far back that it would be quicker to relearn than remember. This knowledge is actually some of the most liberating information I have ever heard. If you don’t like the person you are, it’s possible that your habits, such as watching T.V. (oh how I absolutely hate T.V. the burning fiery passion of a thousand scalding suns), taught you morals and values and information that you never really “liked” but accepted simply because you haven’t been shown another way of living. If you are completely happy being a consumer (I know that I am personally miserable being a consumer), than more power to you. There is a reason this style of living has continued, and it’s not because it doesn’t work.
This very article is a form of influence. By simply bringing up a subject that many people don’t think about on a day to day basis, or have never thought about, I have stimulated your brain to start thinking about it, and hopefully it will slowly work its way into your everyday life.
Chances are, you read this entire article with Morgan Freeman as the narrator.
By: Stephen Polsky